Chìchéng zhì 赤城志
Gazetteer of Chìchéng [Tāi-zhōu] by 陳耆卿 (zhuàn 撰)
About the work
A 40-juan prefectural gazetteer of Tāizhōu 台州 (modern eastern Zhèjiāng — including the famous Tiāntái Mountains) by Chén Qíqīng 陳耆卿 (1180–1236), jìnshì of Jiādìng 7 (1214) and disciple of Yè Shì 葉適, the leading literary thinker of the Yǒngjiā school. The work covers the prefectural seat plus the five subordinate counties Línhǎi 臨海, Huángyán 黃巖, Tiāntái 天臺, Xiānjū 仙居, and Nínghǎi 寧海, organised under fifteen mén (large divisions). Its title Chìchéng zhì preserves the Liáng-period name of the prefecture (Chìchéngjùn 赤城郡, established by the Liáng), itself derived from the Chìchéngshān 赤城山 — the southern gate of Tiāntái — celebrated in Sūn Chuò’s 孫綽 Tiāntáishān fù 天台山賦 with the famous line “chìchéng xiá qǐ yǐ jiànbiāo” 赤城霞起以建標 (“Vermilion Wall: rosy clouds rise to plant the marker”). The catalog meta gives 1214 as the date — Chén’s jìnshì year, terminus a quo of his career — but the standard scholarly dating places completion in Bǎoqìng 1 to Bǎoqìng 2 (1225–1226), with another minority view placing it slightly earlier in the late Jiādìng (1223–1224); we set the bracket 1214–1223 generously, with the firmly dated jìnshì year as the lower bound and the Sìkù’s implied date (the work post-dates Chén’s 1220 office at Qìngyuánfǔ but precedes his terminal guózǐjiàn sīyè office) as the upper bound.
Tiyao
We respectfully note: the Chìchéng zhì in 40 juan is by Chén Qíqīng 陳耆卿 of the Sòng. Qíqīng, zì Shòulǎo 壽老, hào Yúnchuāng 篔窻, was a man of Nínghǎi in Tāizhōu. He passed the jìnshì in Jiādìng 7 (1214); his offices reached guózǐjiàn sīyè 國子監司業. His career is not registered in the Sòng shǐ; only Xiè Duó’s 謝鐸 Chìchéng xīnzhì 赤城新志 (Míng) records his official lǚlì 履歷 in summary, but not in detail. From an examination of his collected works (Yúnchuāng jí 篔窻集), we learn that in Jiādìng 11 (1218) he served as zhǔbù 主簿 of Qīngtiánxiàn 青田縣, and in Jiādìng 13 (1220) was fǔxué jiàoshòu 府學教授 of Qìngyuánfǔ 慶元府. Zhào Xībiàn’s 趙希弁 Dúshū fùzhì 讀書附志 says that within Qíqīng’s collection the jiānbiǎo 牋表 for the Yífǔ 沂邸 are particularly numerous. Now [examining the Sòng shǐ]: Xiàozōng’s grandson, the Wúxìngjùnwáng Bǐng 柄, was posthumously enfeoffed Yíwáng 沂王; his adoptive son Xījù 希瞿 was once set up by Níngzōng as imperial heir — that is, the Jǐwáng Hóng 濟王竑. Qíqīng must therefore have served as jìshì 記室 (private secretary) at his establishment, but Xībiàn passed over this in his summary.
This is his comprehensive prefectural zhì of Tāizhōu, treating its five subordinate counties Línhǎi, Huángyán, Tiāntái, Xiānjū, and Nínghǎi, divided line-by-line under 15 mén. As to its name Chìchéng: the Wénxuǎn of Sūn Chuò’s Tiāntáishān fù says “chìchéng xiá qǐ yǐ jiànbiāo” — “Vermilion Wall: rosy clouds rise to plant the marker”; Lǐ Shàn’s 李善 commentary cites Zhī Dùn’s 支遁 Tiāntáishān míng xù 天台山銘序: “Going to Tiāntái, one should take Chìchéngshān as one’s road.” It also cites Kǒng Língfú’s 孔靈符 Kuàijī jì 會稽記: “The rocks of Chìchéngshān are all red, in shape resembling clouds and rosy haze.” It also cites the Tiāntáishān tú 天台山圖: “Chìchéngshān is the southern gate of Tiāntái.” Under the Liáng was first established the Chìchéngjùn — the name was taken from the mountain. Qíqīng’s zhì simply uses the Liáng commandery name.
Qíqīng received his learning from Yè Shì 葉適, and the fǎdù (rules and standards) of his prose all have a master’s transmission, hence the narration is everywhere of a sound aesthetic. The Míng’s Xiè Duó once continued the work, but his book is far inferior; in the past it was edited together with Qíqīng’s, but now we separate it out and preserve only its mù 目 (table of contents). Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí records that prefixed to this zhì there were 13 illustrations; in the present base-text not a single one survives — the transcribers, finding it taxing to reproduce illustrations, have over time lost them.
Reverently collated and submitted, seventh month of Qiánlóng 45 (1780). Editors-in-chief: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General collation officer: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
Chén Qíqīng (1180–1236; CBDB 10881) was a leading representative of the second generation of the Yǒngjiā school: Yè Shì’s principal student and lineage-bearer, with a body of sober, methodical prose preserved in the Yúnchuāng jí. His mid-career circuit (1218 zhǔbù of Qīngtiánxiàn; 1220 fǔxué jiàoshòu of Qìngyuánfǔ in Níngbō; subsequent service at the Yíwáng / Jǐwáng establishment as jìshì) gave him both administrative experience of a coastal LiǎngZhè prefecture and the Hànlín-style writing skills that the Sìkù tíyào identifies as the source of the gazetteer’s unusual prose quality. The Chìchéng zhì was completed during his late Jiādìng / early Bǎoqìng prefectural period, with the consensus dating fixing on the late Jiādìng (1222–1224); the Sìkù recension contains internal references that make a strict 1223 date plausible.
The structural innovation lies in the fifteen-mén organisation, which is unusually fine-grained for a prefectural gazetteer of this period (compare Sānshān zhì’s nine mén, Wújùn zhì’s thirty-nine mén); the divisions allow Chén to cover the unusual mountainous-and-monastic geography of Tāizhōu — Tiāntái was the head temple of the Tiāntái Buddhist tradition, and Chìchéngshān was a major Daoist site — with both administrative and religious-cultural detail. The Sìkù tíyào notes that the Chén Zhènsūn Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí records 13 illustrations prefixed to the work, lost in the present transmission.
The work’s transmission was, in the Míng, attached to its sequel: Xiè Duó’s 謝鐸 Chìchéng xīnzhì 赤城新志 of the late fifteenth century circulated bound together with Chén’s zhì; the Sìkù editors separated them and preserved only the xīnzhì’s table of contents in the present entry. The Sòng print being lost, the principal transmitting recensions are Míng prints (the Hóngzhì 11 / 1498 Xiè Duó print combining Chén with the Xīnzhì; the Wànlì re-cuts), with the Sìkù base text from the late-Míng recension. The standard modern critical edition is Chìchéng zhì, SòngYuán fāngzhì cóngkān (Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 1990), vol. 7. The work is a foundational source for the local history of Tāizhōu and for the Sòng documentation of the Tiāntái Buddhist establishment.
Translations and research
No complete English translation. The work is regularly cited in Tiāntái Buddhist studies (Chappell, Stevenson, Donner, Penkower, Brook Ziporyn). For the Yǒngjiā school context, see Hoyt C. Tillman, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (Honolulu, 1992), which treats Chén Qíqīng’s intellectual milieu, and Niu Pu, Confucianism and Salt Production: A Study of Sòng Local Government Documents (PhD thesis, Princeton, 2009), which uses the gazetteer for early-thirteenth-century coastal salt administration. In Chinese, the principal study is Wáng Hóng-yáo 王宏堯, Chén Qíqīng yǔ “Chìchéng zhì” yánjiū 陳耆卿與《赤城志》研究 (master’s thesis, Hángzhōu Shīfàn Dàxué, 2010); Cài Jǐnshēng 蔡錦升, “Chìchéng zhì yǔ Sòng-dài Tāi-zhōu fójiào” (Tāi-zhōu xuéyuàn xuébào, 2012.1).
Other points of interest
The five-county coverage is unusual in giving Tiāntáixiàn full treatment: the gazetteer is one of the most important Sòng documents on the Tiāntái monastic complex (its land-holdings, abbots, ordination registers), and Chén’s prose treatment of the mountain (he was a Yǒngjiā-school disciple, not a Buddhist) is a characteristic specimen of the Yǒngjiā engagement with religious geography from outside. The lost 13 illustrations recorded in Chén Zhènsūn’s Jiětí would have made the work the most heavily illustrated Sòng fāngzhì known to us; their loss is one of the more significant documentary casualties of the medieval fāngzhì corpus.